Minimally invasive surgical procedures are known to offer many benefits over traditional open surgery techniques, including less pain, shorter hospital stays, quicker return to normal activities, minimal scarring, reduced recovery time, and less injury to tissue. To perform such procedures, entry into the patient may be made through an incision or a natural body orifice. Both robotic and manually operated minimally invasive surgical devices may be used.
One example of a minimally invasive surgical robotic system is the da Vinci® Surgical System from Intuitive Surgical, Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif. The da Vinci® Surgical System has a number of robotic arms that move attached medical devices, such as an image capturing device and Intuitive Surgical's proprietary EndoWrist® articulating surgical instruments, in response to movement of input devices by a surgeon viewing images captured by the image capturing device at a surgical site. Each of the medical devices may be inserted through its own minimally invasive incision into the patient and positioned to perform a medical procedure at the surgical site. The incisions are placed about the patient's body so that the surgical instruments may be used to cooperatively perform, the medical procedure and the image capturing device may view it without their robotic arms colliding during the procedure.
An endoscope is a medical device that allows physicians to capture images of and diagnose problems with internal body organs by inserting the device either through a natural orifice or a surgeon created opening and guiding it to a target site within a patient. In some cases, it may also be used to perform medical procedures on the internal body organs. It may be steerable so that its distal tip is controllably oriented for navigation purposes. An image capturing device such as a stereoscopic or monoscopic camera may be provided at its distal tip so that images captured by the camera from that perspective may be viewed on a display screen by the surgeon. To perform various medical procedures at the target site, surgical tools, such as those used for cutting, grasping, cauterizing, etc., may extend out of the endoscope's distal tip.
The endoscope may be rigid such as those used in laparoscopy or it may be flexible so that it is capable of following the curvatures of body lumens. It may also be rigidizable and/or robotic. A rigidizable endoscope is an endoscope that has at least one section of its flexible body that can be made substantially rigid by a mechanical locking mechanism. A robotic endoscope is a flexible endoscope that has at least one section that bends under a computer controlled servo mechanism. It may also be a capsule like the EndoCapsule by Olympus or a tethered capsule in which case it is not controllably oriented for navigation purposes and gets moved in the patient anatomy by gravity, forces applied by the anatomy or by other surgical devices.
Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (“NOTES”) may employ a steerable endoscope to perform surgical procedures on patients. As an example, a flexible endoscope may be guided through one of the body's orifices and enter the abdomen from the inside of the patient, rather than through a minimally invasive incision from the outside. For example, in “transgastric” surgery, instruments are passed through the mouth and into the stomach. A gastrotomy is then performed so that the instruments may enter the abdomen and be used by the surgeon to perform a medical procedure within the abdominal cavity. Once the procedure is completed, the instruments are withdrawn along with any tissue removed during the procedure, and the entry point is closed back up. Because no incisions are made in the patient to accommodate entry of the endoscope, NOTES may be even less painful than surgery using minimally invasive incisions. Also, since it uses a natural body orifice instead of incisions to enter the body, it may result in reduced needs for general anesthetics and faster recovery times.
During the operation of a steerable endoscope, such as in a NOTES application, the endoscope tip may be turned multiple times and in different directions while moving towards a target site. As a consequence, the flexible endoscope may wind up looping around itself and disorienting the operator so as to make it difficult for the operator to keep track of the current direction of the endoscope tip if its captured image fails to clearly indicate its current direction with respect to the target site. In contrast, the operator may have a relatively rigid connection to the view in conventional laparoscopy.
If the operator accidentally moves the endoscope tip in the wrong direction, the tip may inadvertently perforate or otherwise damage tissue causing harm to the patient. Even if such harm is avoided by carefully moving the endoscope tip, additional time is required to repeatedly ascertain the true direction of the endoscope relative to the target, site in the patient. Thus, the time required to perform the procedure is lengthened which adds to the cost of the surgery and increases health safety concerns.